The $43bn State Super will look to slash emissions in its investment portfolio by close to half by 2030 as it embarks on the path to net zero by 2050, in line with the Paris Agreement.

State Super, also known as SAS Trustee Corporation, took the decision to target a 45 per cent cut in emissions by 2030, and to hit net zero by 2050, to protect members’ financial interests, CEO John Livanas said.

“Fundamentally, our primary objective is to ensure members’ best financial interests are met. And really, the whole decarbonisation of our portfolio is through that lens.”

Members supported the fund taking a view on climate risk in the portfolio, he added.

“If we didn’t take climate risk into account, we wouldn’t be able to provide members investment returns without taking enormous risks,” he said.

The fund’s chair, Nicholas Johnson, noted the shift in the investment landscape amid the widespread green push.

“It has become abundantly clear that in acting in the best financial interests of members, superannuation trustees must respond to the investment risks associated with climate change and seek to mitigate them.

“It is equally important for them to realise investment opportunities that will come from the transition to a low-carbon economy, including from new technologies, initiatives and policies over short-, medium- and long-term investment horizons,” Mr Johnson said.

State Super’s 45 per cent reduction by 2030 will be in the weighted-average intensity of carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, emissions by revenue against an end of calendar 2020 baseline.

This is versus the Paris Agreement’s 2010 baseline, making State Super’s target more ambitious, Mr Livanas said.

As the majority of its baseline emissions are found in its equities holdings, it will firstly target reductions in this portfolio, before moving to alternatives and real assets. It will adjust the portfolio over time to ensure its emissions decline progressively.

Rather than opting to divest carbon-intensive industries, the fund will continue its engagement with companies through its investment managers and the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, he added.

“It’ll be up to the investment managers to decide which holdings to divest or to engage, but fundamentally, our policy is to actually work with a company to look at how they will divest or how they will move their own emissions towards a carbon neutrality.

“If everyone were to divest from the difficult companies, it would mean we wouldn’t be helping. But by working with companies, making sure that they’re engaged towards a carbon-neutral future, we hope we’ll be able to get there quicker.”

Source: The Australian

In six years, Bill Vlahos managed to defrauded friends, family and others of $17.5 million, giving away dodgy punting advice.

Now, he’ll spend the next nine years in jail, serving six before he is eligible for parole, for ripping off 71 people in a large-scale punters club he ran between 2008 and 2013.

The Edge was promoted as a betting syndicate where punters could capitalise on Vlahos’ self-described genius for devising a mathematical formula for picking the right horse and his connection to an international betting expert, Daniel Maxwell, also known as “Max”.

But “Max” was a work of fiction and instead of laying the forecast bets he promised his members, Vlahos kept their money and used it to fund a life of luxury for himself, wife Joanne and their two children.

Judge Douglas Trapnell said Vlahos emailed The Edge members betting sheets on Friday nights and Saturday mornings, outlining the horses he claimed he would back at meetings in Melbourne and Sydney. On Sundays, he emailed sheets of the results of those races and details on how the punters allegedly fared.

But the sheets bore no resemblance to what Vlahos did with the money, Judge Trapnell said, as the punters’ club was essentially a Ponzi scheme, where the greater the number of participants, the more money went his way. At one point, The Edge had 1800 members.

Vlahos was in 2016 charged with more than 350 counts of fraud and was accused of misappropriating $129 million. But after weeks of negotiations between his lawyers and prosecutors in 2019, he pleaded guilty to two rolled-up counts of obtaining a financial advantage by deception, and admitted he defrauded 71 people out of a combined $17.5 million.

Judge Trapnell said Vlahos’ deceptions and persistent offending – which continued into 2013 even though his scheme was near collapse and police were investigating – had a devastating and traumatic impact on many.

“I assess your moral culpability as being very high,” he told the 56-year-old, who watched the online sentence from prison.

“It is clear you must have known the impact your offending would have on the victims.

“Yet you continued your deceptive scheme unrelenting and unrepentant. The audaciousness of your behaviour is breathtaking.”

Judge Trapnell said there was no suggestion Ms Vlahos knew of the scam or was complicit in her husband’s crimes.

He accepted Vlahos was motivated by “sheer greed, a need for personal financial gain and a desire for self-aggrandisement”.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

A tight friendship bond between Sydney man Raymond McClure and his GP, Dr Peter Alexakis, is under investigation in the NSW supreme court, The Guardian reports.

Before his passing, McClure made multiple wills from 1986 to 2016, the court heard, leaving his multi-million dollar estate to the Salvation Army, one of his only friends Hildegard Schwanke and her daughter, and Frank Camilleri, a business partner he had known for almost 50 years and who had maintained the apartment buildings.

However, in the last few years of his life, McClure developed a close bond to his Greek Australian GP, ultimately deciding to leave him 90% of his $30m estate.

All three parties and Alexakis are contesting the will in a dispute that has been the subject of a two-week supreme court hearing that finished on Friday.

McClure falls ill

In 2017, McClure became seriously unwell. Alexakis, who had known McClure for about four years, would describe him in court as the sickest patient he had ever treated.

McClure was in palliative care because of a variety of health problems, including diabetes, colorectal cancer that had metastasised, a bowel obstruction, prostate enlargement, cataracts and lymphedema.

Alexakis spoke fluent greek like McClure and was the only person who regularly visited the 83-year-old in hospital. And because McClure was suspicious about other medical professionals and lawyers, he became increasingly reliant on Alexakis for more than just social interaction, Alexakis said.

In early June, McClure met with a solicitor in hospital with a view to changing his will. The solicitor, Angelo Andresakis, had been introduced to McClure by Alexakis. Alexakis told the court McClure had asked him to put him in contact with a lawyer to change his will, but had not discussed his planned changes – including that he planned to include Alexakis in the will – or the extent of his estate.

The court heard that Andresakis had completed Alexakis’s father’s will, performed work for Alexakis’s wife and her family for decades, and his firm had previously authorised a will on behalf of another patient of Alexakis who had gifted the GP $80,000. McClure was not aware of this existing relationship at the time of the meeting, the court heard. Andresakis denied he was obliged to disclose the extent of the relationship and said Alexakis had never told him that he expected to be a beneficiary of the will.

The first will Andresakis made for McClure allocated 65% of the estate – worth about $30m – to Alexakis. The second, which was made the following month and authorised after McClure had returned home from hospital, bequeathed 90% to the GP.

Lawyers for the Salvation Army, the Schwankes and Camilleri say Alexakis’s conduct during this period in mid-2017 is central to their case that he should not receive 90% of the estate.

Raoul Wilson SC, acting on behalf of the Salvation Army’s legal secretary Gary Masters, told the court it should find that a deal had been struck between McClure and Alexakis: firstly that the GP would get his patient out of hospital, and secondly that he would do all he could to ensure that McClure was able to receive the care he needed at home so he would not be admitted again.

Alexakis denies such a deal existed, but gave evidence that McClure had offered him $10,000 to get him out of hospital, which he refused.

Although Alexakis gave evidence he had never discussed McClure’s will with him, Wilson pointed to evidence to the contrary.

One witness said McClure told them he had multiple conversations with Alexakis about removing the Salvation Army from the will because of allegations regarding historical sexual abuse within the institution. McClure, the witness said, claimed Alexakis told him he should consider taking the Salvation Army out of the will, and he later decided to “leave my money where it could do some good. Peter is a good man.” Alexakis denied the conversation ever occurred.

Justice Trish Henry will hand down her decision at a later date.

There is more to this story. Read the rest on The Guardian Australia